Viewing profile — markvdb

Similar in neighbouring Latvia. Friends who recovered their grandparents' nationalised farm organised one there. They got to meet neighbours who lived there during the occupation. …

Square cube law will optimise heat storage. These Finnish sand based heat batteries are a prime small-scale example.

To state the obvious, it's not about taking away the right to eat red meat, right? It's about trying to convince people to adopt a diet that is: - healthier - tasty - cheaper - a s…

I once was in a train making an unscheduled stop in the middle of the fields. The driver picked up a colleague who stood waving next to the rails...

A negative tax wants carbon negative processes to exist. That clear direction is more important than whether these processes currently exist. Experimental olivine based carbon capt…

Price elasticity definitely is a thing, but I'd argue not in the way you see it. Have a somewhat competitive energy market and falling production prices like we have for carbon neu…

CO2 capture can be carbon negative, even if it consumes energy.

Just replacing expensive fossil energy with cheap renewables and storage doesn't help. The problem is Jevons paradox. Cheaper energy means more consumption. A sensible global polic…

By EU standards, that is expensive and low power for balcony power. It this US regulatory capture, China import rates, something else, all of the above?

- There is no "we", but it would take "we" to fix this. - There is a global scale issue, but no consensus on this being a problem. Not at the global, continental, local or individu…

Not necessarily. At least in Flanders (northern ~half of Belgium), this was shifted onto consumers by making them pay for peak quarter consumption. Using more than 2.5kW for 15 min…

The core of the EU system is much more elegant. It sets a day-ahead production price per 15 minutes at auction. In EU countries with reasonable distribution cost, dynamic rates are…

Conserving energy makes sense regardless of nearby data center electricity consumption.

Same here.

This holds for Belgium too. The notary class here are overpaid self-dealing monopolists selling you mediocre service at best. We were just required to pay 801€ for a bog standard p…

Of my many many acquaintances with Belgian CIT liable companies, exactly one used to do their own taxes. They still outsourced salary payment though. That is even trickier than tax…

Substance would be real activity happening in Estonia: - Where are the decisions made? - Where is the work being done? Why would I otherwise pay 66% in taxes in Belgium when I coul…

You mean German CIT and German PIT I assume. How happy would the US IRS be with that?

Belgium mandates peppol for b2b transactions since January 1st. This at least carries the potential of simplifying things for honest businesses.

OECD CFC rules have become much stricter in this regard...

...and move to Ireland.

> If you think about starting a company, spend some time to think through what it would mean for you to be a Delaware C Corp or an Estoinian one. It will increase your chances of s…

Substance in Estonia is usually required. A rented address does not suffice for that.

Not incorporating would be very fiscally suboptimal here (.be) for anything tech related. Your marginal tax+ social security contributions rate would be ~66% starting from 50k€ gro…

> If you can file all of the taxes and other legally required paperwork yourself, you can be set up in a week or two. Is realistic in the Netherlands to try and fulfill all formal …